Mechanical Memory
by Gilded Muse
Summary: Oneshot. Mark takes the evening to try and remember something. Slash. MarkRoger.


**Author: **Stephanie (Gildedmuse)  
**Fandom: **RENT  
**Pairing: **Mark/Roger (Of course, Mark/Maureen has to be mentioned)  
**Rating/Warning:** Almost Like R. Angst, Slash, and utterly Unbeta'd.

**Mechanical Memory**

Mark's memory is shit, which is fine. You don't need a decent memory when you can capture it all on film. Memories on film stay fresh and perfect forever, maybe a little fuzzy and broken at times, but it leaves you free from cluttering your mind with all those small, unimportant facts you don't need to remember anyway. The important ones stay as real as they were the first time around, and if you ever loose any of those feelings you can just go back and watch them all over again through the shaking eye of the camcorder.

Mark's memory is shit. He cites this as his reason for getting out his old tapes and plugging them up to the projector. There is probably something important that his mind has forgotten all about, he figures. He could never remember it the way his camera can.

Roger was at the hospital, waiting for Mimi to die, even if he wouldn't put it that way. No one wanted to put it that way, but in years from now that's how it would appear on film. While Roger's away, Mark's mind drives him insane with shadows of memories until he can't take it anymore. So the projector is set up and the lights are turned out and Mark waits to be reminded.

A fuzzy, cheap quality picture sticks to the wall of the loft. It's their building: tall, dark, and just as much of a shithole as it ever was. It was the sort of people went when they were giving up all hope of ever moving up the food chain.

The three boys standing on the sidewalk didn't seem to mind. The Boho boys are just happy to get out of the cold. There's Benny with his ratty clothes he probably burned after the wedding. Collins with his hands shoved into his pockets talking with some boy at the door. Roger smiling and waving at Mark to come and help with the bags instead of just standing around with his camera. He's got his guitar in slung up on one shoulder and a duffle bag over the other. He looks years younger and infinitely happier. There's a healthy color to his skin that looks strange to Mark. It's one of those things from so long ago that his mind has written over it so that every memory of Roger has him pale and way too thin.

Flat against the wall is a picture of proof that even Roger was once happy and healthy. Mark is hypnotized by this wild eyed, laughing boy he doesn't quite remember and the camera seems just as obsessed. It stays fixed on Roger while the others move about the apartment, and watches the boy claim his bed and unpack his bag. Finally Roger notices he's being stalked and turns to smile at the camera, saying something the project can't play. The two stay still, Roger smiling and the camera content to just stare until the whole screen shakes and shows the image of a hard concrete floor. The couch has collapsed.

There are a few more day-to-day shots of the four boys in their apartment. Roger with his guitar, Collins lecturing Mark about something, Roger burning breakfast, Benny showing off his new suit, Roger strumming on his guitar and talking about something, and other shots that aren't even interesting enough to go into a documentary. Mark watches everyone with absolute rapture.

Then starts the montage of Maureen.

It starts slow at first. Every third or fourth shot being of a pretty girl smiling and waving and throwing kisses at the camera. She obviously loves the attention and the spot light, and the camera loves her right back. Pretty soon it's an hour of undisrupted Maureen. Every twirl of the hair and pout of the lips is recorded and the camera never once strays from her, not even when she gets bored with this and stops throwing herself in front of the spotlight.

There are no shots of Benny dressing in nice suits he couldn't afford and leaving without warning. Not one of Collins moving in and out with his work. No needles of blow or late nights filled with screaming matches and vomiting. Only beautiful Maureen, soaking up the camera's attention so it never had time for a wide shot.

The only real break in this montage of Maureen features a girl who was too thin and too young and too worn around the edges. It's been played on the projector so many times that the shadow of her picture is practically burned into their wall.

April isn't high, at least not the way she was during the last months of her life where the smallest thing could have her tearing at her own skin. She's dressed in someone else's prom dress she found on the side of the road that's almost three sizes to big for her and rip to shreds. But you can still see the hot pink, shiny fabric through the dirt and most of the frills are still in place. She looks like a Halloween princess.

She's spinning. Spinning so fast that the dress's skirt is a ring of pink fire and lace around her waist. She spins and spins and spins until she falls, landing against their brand new couch they dug out of the dump. The camera zooms in on her face with the bruises and lines and the black circles under her eyes. She's gaunt and dirty and laughing like she's the luckiest person alive.

The picture doesn't have any sound to accompany it, but Mark remembers thinking that she sounded like a twelve year old with a secret only she could understand.

The camera moves closer, and April reaches out so that she can place a kiss on the lens. Against the wall of the loft all there is to see is a huge, black blob. The camera pulls away, and the picture of the girl is slight destroyed by the sloppy spit left behind on the glass. April laughs until she turns into white and black static.

Maureen comes back on and resumes her place as queen of all attention for a while.

Then there is nothing.

On the camera it is a black blip between scenes no longer than half a second.

In Mark's memory it was years, dragging into decades and shooting past forever. In Mark's mind, the last picture of Maureen is followed with a funeral and testing and Roger going between throwing a tantrum to refusing to move for days on end.

On the camera, this is all represent by three seconds of black, and then life resumes like nothing happened.

The next shot is of a door. Half a door, really, that the camera is hiding itself behind like it knows it's capturing something it shouldn't be seeing. Hidden in the shadows so that it can watch a boy hiding himself away in those same shadows. The figure is bent over, seated on a bed and not moving even to breath, it seems.

The camera watches this for neatly five minutes, waiting for the boy to show some sign of life. When he does the stillness is rattled and a blur moves in front of the picture.

Mark sees himself take a seat next to Roger. Roger never moves, doesn't even shrug Mark away when the other boy wraps his arm around Roger's shoulders and pulls them together. It takes a while of them sitting like that, Mark touching Roger and Roger still so far away from Mark that you can see the vast distances even on the old, mechanical memory of the camera.

Then without any words Roger goes limp, sagging into Mark and burring his face against Mark's chest.

The camera doesn't catch the wetness against Mark's shirt, but Mark can still feel it. Back on the safety of the couch, long after the scene has played out he can touch his shirt right where Roger had laid his head and cried. Five years and a hundred washes wouldn't change that.

On the wall, in a broken picture, Mark runs his hand through Roger's hair, all the way down his spine and back again. He repeats this small comfort until the camera shows that Roger has stopped trembling, but Mark knows the camera is lying. That Roger is still shaking in his arms.

Roger lifts his head. His mouth moves without any words. There is a muted answer from Mark.

"What the hell am I doing? What I am going to do, Mark?"

"Whatever you need. Whatever you want."

Roger does just that.

The film shows Roger leaning forward slowly, but in Mark's memory it was so quick he couldn't have stopped it even if he'd had time to process what was going on. He presses against Mark, not just chest-to-chest but legs-to-legs and shoulder-to-shoulder and lips-to-lips. Mark's hand stops halfway down Roger's back and curls into the hard fabric of Roger's unclean shirt. He's blood speeds up and his mind explodes and his whole being has gone into shock and he wants to scream and panic and push away to ask what the hell was going on.

The camera shows nothing but a very still Mark.

Roger doesn't give up. He pushes harder and harder so that by the time Mark thinks he's figured out what was happening to him, he is pressed against the mattress with Roger on top of him.

That's when he manages to kiss back.

There are no sounds in the apartment, but Mark's mind is filled with echoing moans. Roger's hands find Mark's hair and tug and dig into the skill until the two boys are as close as they can be without cutting themselves open and smashing their insides together. At the time it had felt like that was what Roger had planned, to split Mark open and crawl inside him. To be in any body but his own.

Mark has pushes himself up on his elbows now, and Roger has attached himself to Mark's neck. There are some things the camera doesn't quite catch, like Roger's teeth scrapping against the pale throat – sucking and biting at the vein hiding just bellow the skin until both boys are hyper aware of Mark's blood pulsing through him. On the wall it looks like nothing more than two boys necking. Mark doesn't remember necking. He remembers two boys listening to the beat of Mark's life.

Mark's mouth open and closes in silence. What he's trying to say, what the project leaves out is, "Roger, please."

Mark's pants are pushed away. Roger's hand rests at the base of his erection, applying just enough pressure that Mark can no longer speak while Roger continues trying to get at Mark's blood with his lips.

The camera doesn't show Mark's skin set on fire.

More mouth movements with no meaning behind them, not even before the recording took away the sound. Roger is pumping Mark's cock: fast and messy, not caring about rhythm or pleasure. His mind is devoted to Mark's blood, licking and nipping and holding onto the pulse.

Mark's mind is gone. He is spread over the bed, thrusting out of time with Roger's erratic movements. His legs are flung open, his head tipped back, and his body begging for something he's not sure he wants. He is whining and pleading and in no way in control of himself. His eyes flutter closed as he tries to hold on to his last tangled shred of sanity. His body keeps moving without him.

Mark is alone in the apartment, being bathed in a blue light. The film is over but he can still feel Roger's mouth covering his vein, searching for the healthy blood bellow Mark's pale skin. He brushes a finger over his neck and thinks that the bruise from five years ago should still be there even now.

It's gone, faded back to pale, and Maureen gone on to someone she loves and Roger's fading away. Mark is sitting alone in some beat up, run down apartment with a mechanical memory to play back every scene he missed, and all he wants to do is be able to forget.


End file.
